


spend your days biting your own neck

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Mind Control, by that i mean some eye imagery that could be uncomfortable, nothing graphic or anything but an eye where there shouldn’t be one, this can’t happen mechanically but the narrative potential. listen.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27615424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: Yasha can bear to look at him—Yasha can endure anything, anything at all, her god calls her to endure—but it is painful. His grin is too familiar; a showman’s smile, for all that this stranger is no circus performer.Beau steps out in front of them all, the tip of the spear, and that’s when it all goes wrong.(The eye on the back of her neckburns.)
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 8
Kudos: 129





	spend your days biting your own neck

**Author's Note:**

> listen i know this wouldn’t happen because of stillness of mind or whatever but like... just Go With It. my brain pulled this idea out of thin air this morning (when i was um. rereading my earlier beau fic. because i care her.) and i couldn’t put it down. beau’s tattoo?? eyes?? is that something??

They make quite a tableau, the Mighty Nein and Mol—Luci— _Nonagon’s_ crew. The unidentified woman twists in the air one last time, her scream breaking off, and her body falls to the ground with a thud.

Fjord and Caleb are sword-sharp as they exchange glances, both preparing to speak. Caduceus projects his best serenity but there’s a tension running through him, clear in all of them. Veth’s hand is on her crossbow.

Jester inhales once, ragged, and Yasha steps up beside her, hoping that she’s close enough for the tiefling to pick up a little of her warmth. It’s been so hard on Jester, these past few days. It’s done something to her, made her brittle at the edges—if Yasha can lend her a little strength now, she’s glad to do it. Jester has been so present, so careful, making sure to check over the course of their journey; Yasha is a watcher, she’s caught the unsteadiness in the cleric’s footsteps, the glances she throws over her shoulder. It’s an upsetting thought, that their frien—that their _former friend_ has fixated on her in some way, that he’s working to unnerve her.

Yasha can bear to look at him—Yasha can endure anything, anything at all, her god calls her to endure—but it is painful. His grin is too familiar; a showman’s smile, for all that this stranger is no circus performer.

Beau steps out in front of them all, the tip of the spear, and that’s when it all goes wrong.

\---

There’s some kind of air fuckery going on, because a gust of wind rushes over the Nein. It’d be cold enough to make her shiver, if she was gonna let that happen.

Beau’s pretty sure she just witnessed a murder.

_Look at me,_ she says without saying, stepping to the front, angling her shoulders. _Look at me, not at them._

Red eyes meet hers, catch on the curl of jade at the side of her neck. Nonagon’s head tilts to the side and something is _watching_ her, something is pressing all around, something has her from every angle—

“You’re _interesting,”_ he says, delighted, and she can _feel it,_ there are eyes on her back, there are _eyes on her back,_ there is something _looking._

She catches exclamations, curses, half an incantation from Caduceus, but it’s all a mess of sound as the feeling overwhelms her—she thinks she feels her knees hit the ground— _there is something looking—_

The eye on the back of her neck opens. The eye on the back of her neck _burns._

\---

Yasha sits in the tower parlor, whetstone in hand and Skingorger across her lap. The sword doesn’t need sharpening—it holds an edge no matter what she does with it—but the motion is soothing. Familiar.

The air is warm and smells faintly of the tea rapidly cooling at her elbow. Caduceus has bullied his way into the kitchens very effectively and has taken command of the cats, and he keeps sending them up with things. 

Jester is curled up on a nearby pouf, a blanket around her shoulders and her sketchbook open on her knees. She hasn’t made a mark in it yet. She’s very quiet.

Fjord and Veth and Caleb are in conversation by the fireplace. They’ve been in conversation by the fireplace for some time, almost since Caduceus and Jester magicked them all back to Nicodranas and poured Yasha’s innards back into her body. His swords have gotten sharper, since they knew each other.

They’d been carnival foils, once.

Yasha focuses on the whetstone in her hand and the blade in her lap. She draws it across the metal a few times, tests the edge—the cut is bright, less pain and more a reminder that it is a weapon that she holds—and switches to the other side. Over and over, her heartbeat slow and calm in her chest, she sharpens her sword.

“...twice as bad,” Caleb’s voice floats over, “It’s _twice_ as bad as one of us being taken—”

“We’ve been through this,” Fjord groans, frustrated and weary. “We know it’s bad, _I_ know it’s—”

“Beauregard can walk into _any building in the Empire,”_ Caleb says, louder, “her position gives her access to the whole of the _nation._ We might wake up tomorrow to find Dwendal dead!”

“You don’t care about King Dwendal,” Fjord snaps. “Nobody does, he’s a waste of time. It wouldn’t matter if he died.”

Jester stands, blanket trailing behind her, and walks out of the room. Yasha draws her whetstone across the blade.

“We’re getting her back,” Veth says. “Both of you just, just shut up. We’re getting her back.”

Fjord makes a strangled sound and Caleb inhales. Yasha draws her whetstone across the blade.

Veth keeps talking. “Don’t interrupt— _don’t_ interrupt me, Fjord, I _will_ shoot you. We’re getting Beau back not because of her position or what might happen, but because she’s our family. We all love her. So, we’re getting her back.”

Yasha draws her whetstone across the blade. When she closes her eyes she sees Beau with a halo of red light, the glow in her eyes as she turned with her staff in her hands. When she closes her eyes she hears Nonagon call her name with a laugh in his voice, _Welcome!_ echoing through the underground chamber.

When Yasha closes her eyes she feels the swords wrenching free from her gut, watches them all disappear.

Yasha tries not to close her eyes. She sharpens her sword instead.

\---

It’s a new experience for Yasha, chasing Beau and Nonagon and the surviving Tomb Takers. A new kind of pain. 

They’ve adopted new tactics, the two of them in almost-perfect tandem, both terrifically sharp. The Nein are consistently a step behind, even as fast as they can move, even calling in favors across continents—they catch a glimpse of them in Asarius, the edge of Beau’s coat disappearing around the corner, and arrive in Rexxentrum just in time to watch the bottom floor of Da’leth’s tower crumple inward, the stone brought to life and _starving—_ there is not a moment wasted anywhere, not a second of hesitation.

Dairon was furious, when they were informed of everything. They’re searching, now, scouting in places that the Nein have never heard of. The entirety of the Zadash Archive has shifted gears, become a hunt through old and forbidden texts. Zeenoth even mentioned praying to the Knowing Mistress for guidance.

_She didn’t choose you,_ Yasha doesn’t say, because she is a watcher, because she knows how to hold her tongue. _You were a cage. She was dying to get away from you when we met, when she chose_ us. _She isn’t yours._

The Mighty Nein do their best to cope, between teleportations and negotiations and bribes for angry guards. Their best is not very good.

Fjord and Caleb are thinking themselves in circles whenever they get the chance, caught in a back-and-forth. Yasha is tempted to sit them down—Yasha is tempted to ask _Caduceus_ to sit them down—and get them to stop arguing about next moves. But they’re adults, they’re all adults, and if they need to fight they can fight about who cares about Beau more and who can predict what will happen next. (No one and no one, respectively.)

There’s a note left behind in a ruined library that makes Caleb flinch, hands shaking just a little. It’s nonsense to Yasha, letters and phrases that make nothing clear, but it’s Nonagon’s words in Avantika’s code. He is pale for days, wondering what Beau has taught the stranger, wondering what the stranger is teaching _her._

(“If it’s like it was with me,” Yasha tells him, sitting across the table, “she’s answering his questions. But he has to ask the right ones.”

“Can he...”

“Obann couldn’t read my mind,” Yasha says, like the name isn’t a little stab in her chest. “It was difficult to keep secrets, not impossible. And he has no reason to ask about us, not in depth.”)

Caduceus and Veth seem locked in their own argument, albeit one with less words exchanged and more simmering under the surface. Someone had said something, from what Yasha can gather, and the other person hadn’t taken it well. She’s not very invested in it, honestly, but if Caduceus said something about divine plans or Veth drove right into a sore spot in that way she’s prone to, at least it hasn’t affected their combat. 

(“You have each other’s backs,” she mutters, pulling a misfired bolt from Veth’s leg as swiftly as she can. 

Caduceus touches the wound with a glowing hand, knitting it back together. Veth nods, reloading her crossbow.)

Jester draws and draws, pictures of Beau and the others, places they’ve been, symbols they’ve studied. She has two pages devoted to Beau’s tattoo, the shift of it into something terrible and new, and the curls of shading are dotted with notes in green ink, possibilities and things none of them would think of on their own.

(“I might have a plan,” she tells Yasha, fingers dancing across the page. “I might have something—divine inspiration. I can almost see it.”

Yasha looks up from a borrowed book with that terrible feeling in her chest, that killing thing: Hope.)

For her part, Yasha considers her swords, considers her friends, considers what it means to be this family, right now. And she writes letters.

_Beau,_ she scribbles in the back of the transmutation book in her room, _I think of you_ ~~_all the time_ ~~ _often. I look for you. I say your name._

_Beau,_ she writes on the back of a message from Essek, _I think of you all the time. I think of how you fight, how you defend._ _I ~~do not want to kill you. Please, do not make me~~ _

_Beau,_ she writes in her head, _you love so fiercely. You are so fiercely loved._

_Beau,_ she writes in her head, _I know a piece of what you are enduring. You can hold your own. We will make you safe._

_Beau,_ she writes in her head, _I have your back. I hold you in my mind. I have you._

\---

They catch up with the Tomb Takers at the edge of a deep valley, in the mountains at the cusp of the world. Space itself bends strangely, the ground unsteady like it can’t be sure if it’s earth or sky. The forest is full of trees growing at strange angles, looking in odd places for sunlight. 

It is the culmination of a ritual, a raising of the ancient, dead city. It is a dark night, what light the moon might offer obscured by thick clouds.

Fjord and Caleb and Caduceus, accompanied by a few key allies, slip invisibly around the back of the camp to head for the ritual site. There’s not much time at all—both because the ritual begins at midnight, from all they can find, and because Fjord and Caleb and Caduceus do not make the stealthiest group—but they shouldn’t need much. They don’t need more than a moment, if it’s the right moment.

Beau stands in the middle of the twisting path that leads there haloed in that red glow, a haze of blood in the air around her. She draws the end of her staff across the ground in one motion, scores a line in the dirt. On one side the trees rustle; on the other, there’s nothing but wind. The path is narrow, here, and if they go the wrong way it’s a very long way down.

“My whole life,” she snarls, “people have tried to control me. You guys weren’t the first, but you _will_ be the last.”

“She doesn’t mean it,” Jester murmurs, something fierce in it, a note of her praying voice. “That isn’t what we do, you know?”

_I know,_ Veth whispers into a wire, hidden in the nearby trees

“I know,” Yasha says, drawing Skingorger. 

“You’re not crossing this line,” Beau promises. “We’re raising the city, and I’m going to be _free.”_

And then they’re fighting.

Yasha does not let herself be distracted by her letters, by the pain in her chest, by the lightning in her blood. She throws back her head and lets out a _scream,_ comes down from the motion raging at Beau and the world that has happened to the both of them.

She is dogged, determined, grim in her task. There is no smiling between them, no banter—but there is a moment where Beau hurls a throwing star at Jester that lands far from the target, a moment where her staff catches Yasha in the chest but doesn’t stun her—it is a fight on more than two fronts, Beau against them and them against the city and Beau against herself and on, and on.

Over and over again, Yasha rushes up to the line and Beau beats her back with her staff, her throwing stars, her lightning gloves. They wear at each other, Yasha getting in hits of her own, Beau twisting but not able to dodge it all. Jester runs through a litany of spells, vanishing between each one and popping up somewhere new to cast her spirit guardians or heal Yasha. Veth, too, makes the trees an uninviting space with the help of a great deal of crossbow bolts.

“I’m _going_ to be free,” Beau pants, something desperate in it, and her swing goes wide thanks to a last-minute jerk of her muscles. The red in the air around her is sinister and bright, twists like a hand in her hair. With an unexpected flourish from her staff, Skingorger clatters away.

_Now,_ Veth’s voice whispers, _Yasha, now!_

A bolt comes flying out of the trees; Beau catches it, turns, hurls it back. At the exact moment she commits to the throw, Jester’s axe comes hurtling through the air, gleaming with prayer-light.

The monk dodges, _twists;_ the blow that would’ve taken her head off rockets past her neck.

Yasha runs.

Rage gives her speed, or hope, or _something._ Lightning crackles in the air, the thunderclouds rumble. Magician’s Judge untouched on her back, she gets her arms around Beau.

In any of Jester’s novels, they’d kiss right here in the rain.

Yasha pushes herself two steps farther, past the line, and launches them both into the empty air.

\---

_Please,_ Jester prays, looking down into the dark. _Please—_ and once, her faith made a god. 

Veth comes out of the trees to stand at her side and grips her hand, tight.

\---

Beau snarls and scrabbles and fights as they tumble through the sky. The air around her tastes like blood, like death, like the wrong side of a grave.

Yasha gets a hand around her throat and _squeezes._

The pressure is what does it, pulling at the skin. Beau gasps for air as they fall and the scratch of Jester’s blow splits open across the jade tattoo, the eye.

The ground is coming, Yasha knows, because they are falling towards it, because that is what happens. The ground is coming and Beau is gasping in her grip, blood pouring onto Yasha’s fingers from the wound. The ground is coming closer and closer and _closer—_

Enough blood or a lack of air, the red light snaps and _vanishes—_

And Yasha screams again, releases her wings.

**Author's Note:**

> the title of this fic... i am not immune to Little Lion Man. i just believe that the beauyasha angst can be reversed, as a treat. i know this wasn’t super shippy or anything but. it’s about being controlled and doing violence and the lines that get crossed before anyone knows they’re there i guess. what's more romantic than tumbling into an abyss together (and one of you has angel wings.)  
> evil!beau could fully wreck the entire m9 i believe that with my whole heart. anyway like i said at the beginning i wrote this in pretty much one sitting and i do not really want to edit it so let me know if there are any mistakes! it’s pretty late at time of posting and i am very tired.  
> leave a comment and let me know what you think!! i really love them :)


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